Academy — The Comic Tour
45 minutes to the mental model, eight images at a time
Before you pick a Contributor or Operator track, build the mental model. The comics are the top of the UIAO_128 Education funnel — one image per core abstraction. Roughly 45 minutes cover-to-cover if you pause on each panel; 5 minutes if you flip through them as a flyover.
Each comic below pairs with a short narrative walkthrough and a canonical source. The walkthrough grounds the image; the canonical source names the spec the abstraction is governed by.
The comic JPG assets live under docs/publications/series-assets/. Each row below names the specific asset.
1. The Governance OS
What it shows: UIAO is an operating system for governance, not a scanner, not a document generator.
Walkthrough: docs/narrative/program-education.qmd — “Before you can use UIAO…”
Canon anchor: the whole substrate — start with UIAO_001 SSOT.
2. The Canonical Object
What it shows: one object, one canonical record. Every telemetry event, policy decision, enforcement action attaches to a canonical object.
Canon anchor: UIAO_001 SSOT + UIAO_129 Application Identity Model — the application is the first-class canonical object.
3. The Unified Environment Map
What it shows: adapters collapse many vendor surfaces into one map. The reader stops thinking “which vendor?” and starts thinking “which application?”
Canon anchor: UIAO_003 Adapter Segmentation Overview + modernization-registry.yaml.
4. Provenance
What it shows: every artifact traces back to a canonical source. No orphan evidence, no free-floating claims.
Canon anchor: UIAO_113 Evidence Graph Model.
5. The Modernization Lifecycle
What it shows: a modernization is not a project — it’s a lifecycle. UIAO runs it end-to-end: identify → plan → execute → verify → drift-watch → remediate.
Canon anchor: UIAO_124 Adapter Operations Runbook + UIAO_127 Project Plans Program.
6. Address Governance
What it shows: the directory / IPAM flow that once lived in the uiao-gos predecessor repo. IP addresses, DNS zones, and canonical identity stay coherent across a migration.
Walkthrough: Governance-OS directory migration narrative
Canon anchor: ADR-028 + modernization-registry entries for bluecat-address-manager, infoblox-nios.
7. Drift Detection
What it shows: the closed loop — scan → classify → remediate. Canon says what should be; walker says what is; the delta is a drift finding.
Canon anchor: UIAO_110 Drift Engine + the five-class drift taxonomy in 16_DriftDetectionStandard.
8. Drift Remediation
What it shows: a finding becomes a POA&M item, then a closed ticket. The loop doesn’t just detect — it resolves, and the resolution is audit-grade.
Canon anchor: UIAO_117 Recovery Layer + OSCAL POA&M outputs.
When you’re ready
Having seen the eight abstractions, pick a track:
- Contributor track — you’ll write code and canon
- Operator track — you’ll run the substrate against your environment
Both start from UIAO_125 Training Program’s shared core. Pick by role, not by depth.